Building a pc tends to be done by enthusiasts and so it is done by people who know the difference between ram and the hard disk. With that in mind selecting a cpu tends to become more of a question of which technical religion do you follow – Intel or AMD. Over the last few decades the undisputed champion of performance has been Intel, after all they did create the processor that made its way into the IBM personal computer from which most pc’s share their common ancestry.
Despite being in the AMD camp for a very long time I had also eyed the Intel I7 processors but never quite had the money for a processor which hasn’t changed dramatically over the last decade. It was only in 2017 when AMD changed the game. Since then I had been hoping to get the 1st or 2nd generation threadripper which would have more than doubled the processing power I currently have if my computer were twice as powerful as it is.
Late last year when I started to have some computer troubles I decided to get started. The AMD 3rd generation threadrippers were coming out but AMD had gone over the top. The new low end threadripper now has 24 cores and despite the relative cost performance to the Intel being quite good I seem to have been priced out of the threadripper market. It isn’t just the processor but the cost of an entire system which was getting a bit rich for my budget. Well not only that but 16 core/32 thread processor was probably more than I could fully utilize.
| Generation | Model | Cores | Cost |
| 1 | Threadripper 1950x | 16 | 617€ |
| 2 | Threadripper 2970wx | 24 | 1033€ |
| 2 | Threadripper 2990wx | 32 | 1979€ |
| 3 | Ryzen 9 3900x | 12 | 517€ |
| 3 | Ryzen 9 3950x | 16 | 979€ |
| 3 | Threadripper 3960x | 24 | 1400€ |
| 3 | Threadripper 3970x | 32 | 1999€ |
| 3 | Threadripper 3990x | 64 | 3000+ |
This is a tremendous jump in capability over just a few years which in itself would be amazing but AMD’s entire line has taken a jump in abilities but they have also just released their own enthusiast chip Ryzen 9 3900x. This chip has 12 cores and 24 threads and the bigger brother 3950x has also been released. This chip will have 16 cores and 32 threads which is just as formidable as the first generation threadripper.
The Ryzen 9 3900x is an amazing chip which is quite muscular and should be relatively future proof for my particular uses.
The decision of the processor allows me to move on to the next decision which is which motherboard I should purchase.
